Build Buy Mode in TS4... my little review

Writin_Reg wrote:
Well it is obviously a map made hood because it is not flat and it has a variety of textures like CAW. But in sims 2 we could have that if we built our own hood by building a world in Sim City 4. Then adapting that to a template so it was useable in the game. So not having tried the new Sim City to see the land capabilities - it is really impossible to tell if they used that program and made a the world then transferred it to a template or if they used a CAW.

If I was guessing and going by the limitations of Sims City 4 - well what I recall of it as it has been since Sims 2 AL since I used Sims City 4 - I would guess it was a CAW tool. Reminds me a lot of World Builder 3.4 - seeing it also has animations in the trees and flora and stuff - and Sims City 4 did not. So did you try the new sim city and if you did - does it have breeze animations for trees and such? If it doesn't like sims City 4 - then that would be definitely a World Builder tool which means yes to a CAW like tool.

Looking at the shots shown so far, map is definitely not made from SimCity. I don't even think their are files like the .sc4 terrain files, I haven't found 'em at least. There is an image released of a Victorian style house with a park in the background and two Sims communicating on the bottom left. This image to me proves that The Sims 4 isn't using a CAW. A lot of the contents of the image seem to look like the were put together in a game designing software like Maya. You've even said yourself that the team use a plugin for a design program. They've made a new engine so CAW is instantly thrown out the window which means the plugin is gone too. Since they've been using a plugin for another piece of software, it would be more efficient to continue using it with a new plugin rather then develop a new program. They could ultimately release that plugin, but I doubt many people would go for it because game designing software can be quite daunting for beginners, which there are a lot of in this community.

I'm not too fussed on no CASt yet, it would be nice to have but I can wait. I mean Sims 1 and 2 never had it and I still enjoy it. Only downside is a lot of creations are going to look a little bit too similar because of the restrictive pallet to choose from.

The one thing I'm loving so far from TS4 is how much the world so far seen remind's me of The Sims 2 and The Sims 2 Pets on console. I really enjoyed the world, it was a shame it wasn't open but it was nice to look at. A lot of the build/buy objects were pretty cool. Irrelevant but I feel like worth mentioning, they also had the best cooking system, pick 4 ingredients from a fridge and you could make them into anything depending on the selection and process used. Should maybe bring that back for TS4 :wink: